Sisters Under the Skin
by Scribbler
Summary: [one shot] In ancient Egypt, a young nomad girl named Teana finds a hungry pale stranger and tends to the girl, despite her tribe's orders. Can Teana prevent the tragedy destined for her new friend, or is history too strong to be averted?


**Disclaimer:** Not mine. Wah!

**A/N: **This idea has been swimming around my brain for the past two years, so you'd think when I finally got it down in words I'd be happier with it than I am. Please don't tell me of the (likely) millions of historical inaccuracies, as I was away from the Internet at time of writing and have far too much to do now I'm home to go chasing things up (schemes of work, mark schemes and lessons plans, how I hate thee).

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_**Sisters Under the Skin**_

© Scribbler, August 2007.

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Téana found her at the edge of the fire's glow, where the shadows from the desert tugged and tussled with the light. She had a strange look in her eyes and her stance reminded Téana of wild animals she sometimes saw in the predawn hours, who, having used the nearness of humans as refuge during the night, broke and left with the sunrise.

"You're leaving." It wasn't a question.

She turned, smiled that small, sad smile of hers, and tipped her head to one side. "You are sad?"

"I …" Téana faltered. She wasn't _sad_, but she was uneasy. She hadn't slept well these past few nights and spent daylight pursued by a feeling of … disquiet. Her dreams had been filled with a formless, roiling dread, as though she sensed something terrible was about to happen. The feeling had only intensified upon meeting this stranger. "I worry."

"For me?" The other girl seemed genuinely surprised at this. "Your elders would scold you."

Téana dipped her eyes. The tribe elders would indeed admonish her for concerning herself with an outsider.

She still didn't know what had possessed her to feed and water the willowy girl who had blown in on the evening breeze. She was both a stranger and strange, her colouring unlike anything Téana had ever seen. Her own kith and kin were swarthy, as were all members of the tribe. Their lives were difficult and so were they, though they marked the spirits and carried their histories with them as they travelled, caring for the old stories as though they were precious babes.

This outsider was also rootless, but alone and spoke of no tribe. She had mentioned the Faraway Big Water when Téana brought a canteen. It wasn't the proper name for it, but the word 'ocean' had no meaning, and when the outsider tried to describe a stretch of water as big as the desert, Téana wrote her off as sunsick. She was too young to have travelled that far yet.

The outsider came towards her. Despite herself, Téana took a step back, but stopped when the other girl held out a hand. It took a moment for her to realise she was meant to put her own into it, and still she hesitated. She had proved herself weaker than the rest of the tribe, more sentimental and stupid, but trust was still a precious commodity.

"You are frightened of me." The outsider sounded disappointed, but not shocked.

"My kinfolk…" Téana glanced back, over the fire.

The swarm of tents were quiet, but a guard might happen by at any moment. Joun, especially, was overzealous in his attempts to prove himself a worthy warrior, like his uncle. Seren, his sister, had been especially ill lately, and Téana could only hope that tending her had relegated his duty to someone less eager.

"If they should see me…" They had driven the stranger off, once, kicking sand and throwing curses and goat dung.

"Do not worry. I only wish to give you something." The pale girl waited for her hand. One quick slice and her own could fall to the sand.

Téana was suddenly very aware of the dagger at her belt. All women carried them, sometimes even more than one tucked into their clothes. The menfolk, by comparison, carried their spears and scimitars in full view. For nomads, half of battle involved how to use weapons _not_ to fight.

Eventually Téana gave her hand. However, rather than put an object into her palm, the stranger instead drew her finger down Téana's wrist, along the thin network of veins, then traced a circle that touched the very edges of her palm.

"The ocean," she said softly, "the Faraway Big Water, sometimes seemed so endless to me. It had no sides, no finish, and its beginning changed from beach to beach, cliff to cliff. I could stand on the shore and look until my eyes hurt, but I could never hope to see all of it. I tried, as a child. I should not have wandered to the shore so much, but I could not resist, and it proved my downfall. The Big Water was not endless, as I learned to my cost. Likewise, this circle may seem to have no end and no beginning, but everything has an ending and a beginning. Some are just easier to see than others." She pressed her hand flat against Téana's own. "You were kind to me. I call on the spirits of the ocean and of my homeland to guide your path straight and true, from your beginning to your someday end."

Téana realised she'd been holding her breath and let it out in one great gust. There was an energy in the air like just after a sandstorm – great power given form and spirits called into the physical world. "Th-thank you."

"You are welcome." The stranger smiled, but again it was forlorn. "You have eyes like mine."

Téana blushed. Her eyes were an anomaly amongst her people, for while her skin and hair matched everyone else's, instead of rich brown her eyes were a deep blue. Combined with her dreams, which sometimes showed her fragmented images of the future, she'd been elevated in tribe hierarchy from daughter of a common goatherd to apprentice seer. "I-"

But the stranger was already huddling close under her cloak and turning away. "You were kind to me where nobody else was, but I must leave. This land is so hot and dry … someday I think I may never see my home again. I have been searching so long for the ocean, since I was a child, but every time I near it some misfortune drags me away again. At times I think the spirits of this land wish to keep me here for some reason."

She sounded so sad, so _desperate_, that Téana blurted without thinking, "The Nile!"

"What?"

"Follow the Nile. I … I asked Otog the Seer of the Faraway Big Water, and he said it was like the trunk of a tree, and the Nile is like one of its twigs if you follow it far enough." The idea of the mighty Nile being a mere twig was too staggering to think about too long, but Otog Strange-eyes was a good mentor and had never steered Téana wrong before.

The words brought a smile to the stranger's face. "This I know. As I say, I have tried to hard to reach the ocean before. My route has been clear for many years, only … difficult to make reality." She turned and walked into the lightening desert. Her slender figure seemed soft and terribly vulnerable against the vastness.

Téana wanted to call out to her, to make her come back. Ridiculously, some part of her wanted to beg the elders to let this pale outsider join their tribe; to enfold her in the people who had cared for Téana all her life. The camp had so few youngsters, and even fewer females – only herself and Seren, and soon perhaps only herself. Seren was barren and near-blind. Roving life was harsh for those who could not keep up or, worse, were useless to the survival of the tribe. Joun thought he could prevent the worst by guarding her as zealously as he did the tents when they made camp, but he was one boy against generations of tradition and ruthless survivalism. Seren didn't even have dreams like Téana. The day she finally lost her sight there would be nothing he could do.

This thought made Téana's shoulders slump. If the tribe would cast out a girlchild of their own, whom they had raised since birth, then they would never accept someone like the pale stranger. She was too odd, too … other. Her eyes saw things even Téana had been unable to see- perhaps even things Otog, with his tiny pupils, would be blind to. The pale stranger just seemed _distant_ all the time, as though waiting for something or someone even she wasn't sure would ever come. She was unnerving, which might be why the tribe sent her away. No man would ever marry her and no woman accept her as an equal. The best she could hope for was to be passed on to one of the bands of slavers whose paths the tribe sometimes crossed.

The line and circle seemed to burn like hot ash dropped on Téana's skin. She clenched her fist, and suddenly realised she'd never asked the other girl's name. It hadn't seemed important at the time.

She was too far away to call out to now, especially if Téana intended not to wake the entire camp. Being apprentice to Otog gave her some liberties, but she was still just a girlchild of ignoble birth. The stranger's long legs ate the ground at a tremendous rate, like she was used to running away.

Téana turned away, back towards the encampment. When she couldn't resist one last glance it was too late: the strange girl had already passed out of sight and into danger no formless dream could hope to save her from.

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_**Fin.**_

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End file.
